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explosivejared writes "Forbes is running a story discussing the verdict in the Pirate Bay case and its implications on file sharing, specifically with regard to Google. The article points out what most people on Slashdot already realize: Google provides essentially the same service that the Pirate Bay does. The Pirate Bay case may be far from over, accounting for appeals, but the Pirate Bay's assumption of being unchallengeable was shattered. The article raises the question of whether or not Google is untouchable in the matter. The story is quick to point out how the situation resembles a futile game of cat-and-mouse, but given how the Pirate Bay's confidence was ultimately broken, is Google beyond reproach?"

Google provides a search mechanism for internet content, some of which infringes copyright. TPB provides a search mechanism for downloadable content, some of which infringes copyright.

Google maintains an index of where to find things on the internet, which searchers make use of to get what they want. TPB has a tracker, listing where to find downloads, that searchers make use of to find what they want

Google store a cache of large parts of their searchable content, keeping a copy on their servers to make searches faster. TPB... oh wait.

Because TPB is in breach of the law? If they were going after the downloader you'd be arguing that they should be suing TPB. But fear not, with IPRED, they'll be going after the downloader, too!

Google provides a search mechanism for internet content, some of which infringes copyright.
TPB provides a search mechanism for downloadable content, some of which infringes copyright.

Google maintains an index of where to find things on the internet, which searchers make use of to get what they want.
TPB has a tracker, listing where to find downloads, that searchers make use of to find what they want

Google store a cache of large parts of their searchable content, keeping a copy on their servers to make searches faster.
TPB... oh wait.

Google complies with takedown notices, which grants them freedom from liability according to Swedish law (18 para 2002:562).
TPB... oh wait.

Because TPB is in breach of the law? If they were going after the downloader you'd be arguing that they should be suing TPB. But fear not, with IPRED, they'll be going after the downloader, too!

Actually, if they were going after downloaders I'd say they were exploiting the court system with their money and lawyers... I'd be saying that in this case too if they hadn't been so shockingly incompetent.

TPB being in breach of the law is the current court decision, they still argue that they aren't and I find their argument convincing. It's yet to be seen whether an appeal court will agree. There's also nothing to say that a court wouldn't find Google to be in breach of the law if anyone were to sue them

Google complies with takedown notices, which grants them freedom from liability according to Swedish law (18 para 2002:562).
TPB... oh wait.

Well, fair point that TPB don't comply with takedown notices, but most of the requests they get are appealing to US laws like the DMCA and hence deserve a heaping of scorn. There is also the fact that they don't host anything that's under copyright, so they have nothing to takedown except what is effectively a link to the infringing content... and I think I'm right in saying that linking is legal under Swedish law

Google complies with takedown notices, which grants them freedom from liability according to Swedish law (18 para 2002:562).
TPB... oh wait.

Well, fair point that TPB don't comply with takedown notices, but most of the requests they get are appealing to US laws like the DMCA and hence deserve a heaping of scorn.

According to Swedish law, the notification need not have any special format, nor contain any references to Swedish law. The law only talks about "awareness of obvious copyright infringement". This can be abused, but the service provider has another line of defence: They must be found to purposefully aid in the infringement.

For TPB, since they knew what DMCA was about, they can't really claim to not understand that they are not aware of obvious copyright infringement. If the note had been in Hungarian or hieroglyphs they could have claimed that the note was incomprehensible. If the movies were not big blockbusters they could have claimed that the notices were for material that weren't obviously infringing. (And be safe according to 18 para).

Finally, they have gone on record to say that the purpose of TPB was to infringe copyright. This means they are not protected under paragraph 19 either.

There is also the fact that they don't host anything that's under copyright, so they have nothing to takedown except what is effectively a link to the infringing content... and I think I'm right in saying that linking is legal under Swedish law

The court found that since the torrent file, after having been uploaded and stored on TPB, is an accessory of the crime of illegal copying, TPB must take down the torrent file.

So to summarize, and I am not a Swedish lawyer, linking is cool. Linking to infringing material is ok, as long as you cooperate with rights holders. Linking to material that isn't "obviously" infringing is completely ok.

And by "obvious" we mean that you'd have to be pretty willfully thick-headed to not connect the dots.

If you link to a YouTube video of a shaky camcorder movie of a Balkan wedding, you can reasonably claim that you had no idea that this was the greatest summer hit of 1933 in Kazakhstan, and just wanted to show what a Balkan wedding looked like. But if you link to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", with the text "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!" you can't claim that you had no idea what it was.

But if you link to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", with the text "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!" you can't claim that you had no idea what it was.

Sure you can. How many things are listed in Pirate Bay? Millions? I doubt that anyone who works their actually knows more than a small percentage of the site, its just an automated database. Its like saying that Google "knows" that when I search for "X-Men Wolverine torrents" that its serving up copyrighted material.

Well, a more or less directions for you the user to do something illegal and not the actual content itself...

Maybe being called "The Pirate Bay" and having a picture of a pirates ship as a logo... I dunno... maybe it wasn't such a great move? If they'd called the site "Super Swedish Torrents" or something, and maybe avoided anything that gave the slightest hint the the site was intended for downloading copyrighted material, then *maybe* their case would've been stronger.

On a related note, if the difference between Google and TPB is their "intent", then wouldn't Google be guilty anyway because they link to TPB? Or does the whole guilt thing only work when it's a one-hop-link?!

On a related note, if the difference between Google and TPB is their "intent", then wouldn't Google be guilty anyway because they link to TPB? Or does the whole guilt thing only work when it's a one-hop-link?!

IANAL, this is not intended to reflect actual facts, just my opinion: IMAO linking should never be illegal, but unfortunately it seems to be anyway. The only reason linking is (apparently) illegal is because legislators/politicians are idiots and don't understand the tech they're legislating about (and they don't read the laws they sign either).

That's the only way to settle this, because you are obviously not going to listen to anything I say.

As you obviously didn't read what I said. Who at TPB actually goes through and reads ALL of the comments, all of the file descriptions? No one probably. TPB is a DUMB service, it, as a site and a system, has no knowledge of what crosses through it. If someone had to hand enter all of the data, or TPB somehow woke up one day to find itself Skynet, then yes, it would be aware that someone typed "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!".

Do you think/. is aware of our current conversation? Does anyone on the staff of the site actually know that we're having this conversation? And more pertinently, would they know if I told you where to go download the crappy Comic Book Movie of the Week? Probably not, and more so they are not responsible for this discussion (or say, if I told you where to by drugs/illegal firearms/etc).

Okay, if I defame you on/. (an illegal use), Sourceforge or the admins of/. are not going to get in trouble, I will. The worst that can happen to/. is that they are legally forced to remove the comment, but the further and more real consequences happen to me, the individual who actually broke the law.

We agree on this?

Now, lets say I grab some of your IP, lets say some code from one of your projects, and then I post it fully on/. Now the worst (in the US) that will happen is/. will get a DMCA take-dow

You "specifically stated that the situation was that you linked to the movie" - if I were from TPB I would say "who are you and why should I trust that you're telling me the truth?"

Have you heard about "lying" ?

RIAA and MPAA lie all the time on their DMCA notices when they request stuff to be taken down, they sometimes send them automatically without even checking if the content is fair use or not, so it's simply not possible to believe anyone. (DM

Google complies with takedown notices, which grants them freedom from liability according to Swedish law (18 para 2002:562).
TPB... oh wait.

Has Google ever complied with a takedown notice on a link to copyrighted content, found with their search engine? They comply on youtube, but that is because they actually host the content, not just a link.

Yes, but if you follow the link to copy of the takedown notice, it conveniently has a list of links where you can find the offending content!

I think if Google where to start removing links to copyrighted content other than as required by the law, it would very soon cease being the world favorite search engine.

Can you imagine the outcry on here and Geekdom in general if Google decided to censor results in this way? I'm pretty sure some other search engine would appear without these restrictions and quickly become all computer geeks new baby.
I'm also sure the Google is shewed enough to realize this.

As a thought experiment, what if somebody (such as me) came up with a program that used some of the ideas behind torrents and distributed processing, and created a distributed, decentralized search engine? Say that this program became popular enough that it could create an index large enough and fast enough that it could rival google. Say that some people used it to find and download copyright infringing content.

How would this work, legally, if somebody decided to send a DMCA take down notice? Also, if this distributed search engine were in the position that TPB is in right now, what would be the result? Who would be sued, et cetera?

My guess is that it would be in the same position as programs such as BitTorrent and Transmission: no legal action can be taken against the program because it is just a dumb set of instructions and requires the use of a person to intentionally infringe on copyright.

By the way, I actually plan to implement something similar to this eventually in the future, but if somebody else wishes to run away with the idea, be my guest. Also, try to tell me about it, if you get a chance...I'd be interested to see where the idea goes.

The difference is that google would have cooperated with authorities and media companies. Take a look at what they've done with youtube and Video ID. They will actively try to prevent copyright infringement. Pirate bay didn't and wasn't willing to do that.

But in the eyes of the copyright cartel, they want everyone to believe they're the same thing. However, even if you play nice, there's no guarantee that the cartel will be nice to you for cooperating with them anyway.

But to my knowledge they've never cooperated with the countless photographers claiming copyright infringement through their Google Images service. Yes, that's just pointless bitching, but consistency requires either cooperating with both or don't listen to either. Instead, we only get another instance of the golden rule: "he who has the gold makes the rules". Pity.

they've never cooperated with the countless photographers claiming copyright infringement through their Google Images service

Sure they have. It's called "robots.txt" - and a photographer publishing their works on a web site simply has to ask Google not to index them. And they won't. They'll also lose the potential exposure, but that's a choice.

Google provides a search mechanism for internet content, some of which infringes copyright.
TPB provides a search mechanism for downloadable content, some of which infringes copyright.

You are right - assuming differences of degree do not matter. But they do [wikipedia.org]:

"The key issue in the copyright infringement case was the so-called Sony safe-harbor principle that was set by the Supreme Court 21 years ago in Sony v. Universal Studios 464 U.S. 417 (1984). The ruling stated that, "...the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial non-infringing uses." (Sony 464 U.S. at 442). Grokster argued that proof of reasonable, actual or potential, non-infringing use, is sufficient to fulfil the ""substantiality"" requirement. The RIAA and MPAA argued that Sony safe-harbor requires proof that the non-infringing use is the primary one; an incidental non-infringing use is not enough."

In other words, the difference between google and The Pirate Bay, which is blatantly obvious to the layman, is also recognized by the law.

A crow bar is not illegal. I can buy one for as little as $5-$10. It's very useful in construction and demolitions.

But a crow bar can be a terribly violent weapon. Ever banged your shin with one? It would take just a good swing or two to commit murder.

In many jurisdictions, there are laws having to do with "brandishing a weapon", typically in a threatening manner. I can carry a crow bar all day long at a construction site, and nobody would care. If I carried the same crowbar into a fine restaurant, things would be markedly different. If I sold a crowbar to a kid who wanted to help his dad work on the garage, I'd be a nice guy. If I sold the same crowbar to a kid who wanted to off his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend, I could easily be an accessory to murder.

All you need to do is send Google a DCMA takedown notice. You don't need a lawyer for that. You can find DCMA takedown notices online that you can modify.

You can also send the takedown notice to the webhost.

If the person is running AdSense on their site, which many do, and that's why they steal content, sending the DCMA take down notice could result in them losing their adsense account and their incentive to steal your content.

The pirate bay case means google may have to pay when people use google to download copyrighted material.

That is exactly what is happening. The newspapers are going after Google for money. They want to charge Google for the headlines and short blurbs on the Google News page.

Essentially, everything on the web is copyrighted, Google has money, so people are going to start going after Google. Precedents like this are going to make things worse.

For the moment, the attacks will be fairly non-obvious, but the *AA will push for increasingly draconian copyright laws. Eventually, if they are not stopped, excessive rules will kill the Internet. For those with a sense of history, one can have either a small network with lots of control or a big network with lots of users and lax controls. What made the internet successful was the relative lack of control. Let's hope this doesn't change.

Google is unaffected by this meaningless verdict. The cartels sued four mostly political figures who had no money to defend themselves, and won despite a theatrics worthy of My Cousin Vinnie. This whole ordeal was more of a social media stunt than any realistic legal matter, and by that measure it is a great success, as people everywhere are panicking over the outcome.

Google, on the other hand, is a giant corporation with billions of dollars, filled with many bright minds and, I'm sure, armed with the world's top lawyers. They are no strangers to the copyright issues. Were the MAFIAA to go after Google, they would be facing a very different battle, one they could actually lose, because Google has ample resources to not only put up a real fight, but also lay the groundwork for copyright reform, should the verdict land in Google's favor, with the fruits of that effort trickling down to torrent trackers and any other content indexes.

This was touched on in the trial, again [torrentfreak.com]. and again [torrentfreak.com], and again [torrentfreak.com] and again [torrentfreak.com]. Ultimately the IFPI said that Google is working with them to stop piracy.

"Kennedy was asked why they haven't sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn't announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too." (src [torrentfreak.com])

Look, there'a a huge difference between Google and TPB. It's willfully obtuse to pretend there isn't.

1) Google crawls the Internet and indexes content for searching. It presents search results in the form of hyperlinks to the sites of the people providing the content (exactly the way the WWW was intended to work). Yeah yeah, there is Google Cache, Google News, and Youtube, which occasionally gets them into trouble, but they make efforts to carefully remain within the realm of fair use, including removing copyrighted material from Youtube. One could argue that the WWW would not be able to function without search engines like Google.

TPB, on the other hand, is a website that contains a user-editable index of torrent files people are willing to share. In other words, TPB doesn't crawl for general content that is already publicly available. TPB then facilitates the transactions between users by functioning as a tracker. Torrents are useless without a tracker, so this is a critical difference. Google would not be able to provide the same service as TPB. Yes, you can find torrents via Google, but that is because Google has indexed a tracker like TPB and is just linking to their site.

2) Most of the content accessible through Google is legal, in the sense that the people who own the copyright have shared it explicitly on their website, which is crawled by Google. Most of the content on TPB is not legal, in the sense that the people sharing the files do not own the copyright and are not within the realm of fair use.

3) The content in both Google's search index and TPB's website is trivial to update to remove content that is in violation of copyright. Google willingly does so, usually at the notice of copyright holders. Google also removes content they don't necessarily have to, like Google Streetview images, when requested. TPB consistently refuses to remove content brought to its attention, and often responds with rude, immature, and insulting remarks. [thepiratebay.org]

Everybody stop pretending Google and TPB provide the same service. They just don't. Period.

2) Most of the content accessible through Google is legal, in the sense that the people who own the copyright have shared it explicitly on their website, which is crawled by Google

So are you saying that "making available" information is equivalent to a grant of copyright license when a website does it, but its a copyright violation when TPB does it ?

Yes because what Google facilitates access to is intended for freely accessible by the content creator. If it's systems do facilitate access to copyrighted material, Google will remove references to that material in it's systems on request. TBP on the other hand, unlike Google, deliberately responds with insults and cheesy humor to such requests. Of course this is a gross oversimplification of what the guy was trying to say but hopefully it made things a little clearer for you.

I'm not a lawyer yet. I'm not your lawyer. I'm not anyone's lawyer. This is not legal advice.

There's "Google Cache."

I'm on your side with respect to the conclusion that Google and TPB are vastly different. However, you're barking up the wrong legal analysis tree to get there. Here's a very dirty, quick, and sloppy (but analytically pointing in the correct direction for legal argument) differentiation between Google and TPB:

The difference is the transformative nature of what Google provides (the first factor

TPB the website does not host any content, only links to that content. Typing into Google "filetype:torrent movie" is EXACTLY the same as typing the search term into the Pirate Bay. TPB was convicted of "assisting making available", not actually making the content available. I can click on any of those search results to start downloading the movie hence Google are definitely "assisting making available". Hence they are the same thing.

1) So TPB is a website that contains a user-editable index of links people wish to share with others? Sounds like Yahoo! to me, which is how the Internet functioned before Google came along. I can see TPB morphing into the Google of torrents.

Google responds politely to takedown notices, whether legal or not, as it's a business beholden to their shareholders and public image can affect share price. It's harder to blackmail TPB as they aren't responsible to anybody. Politics aside, this doesn't change the nat

One could argue that the WWW would not be able to function without search engines like Google.

The WWW would not function without DNSs and search engines like Google in the same way that BitTorrent would not function without trackers and search engines like TPB. The WWW is just a bunch of protocols used to connect people with each other to exchange information. That principle is no different from BitTorrent. The only difference is that the information storage can be scattered with BitTorrent, and that the

I wonder how long this will last. The IFPI/RIAA/MPAA/AP/FACT/Whoever will keep making more and more demands until eventually they'll go after Google too.

How long until they start asking for Google to unlist a site that has something infringing their copyright?How long until they start asking for IPs of people who searched for copyright infringing material?How long until they ask Google to only list 'authorized' links for copyrighted search terms?

How long until they start asking for IPs of people who searched for copyright infringing material?

If they did have the audacity to request it, Google would tell them to shove it. Google would just say, and any reasonable court would agree, that they have no reasonable way to know what anyone was actually searching for. Just because I search for the string "Dark Knight" doesn't mean I am attempting to violate copyright by downloading the movie, I might actually be considering going to it and looking for reviews, or show times, or maybe I am just looking for a blog called "dark knight" or

This intent bit is something that escapes a lot of posters here. Tools can be used for good or bad purposes. When considering the legitimacy of a tool, its primary intended purpose is taken into consideration.

Even if Google didn't cooperate with the IFPI, they should get plenty of protection because the search engine wasn't built with aiding copyright infringement in mind. I think it would take a very convoluted argument to say that The Pirate Bay wasn't built and operated with aiding copyright infringem

Intent is only relevant when it is convenient to recognize intent. When it becomes inconvenient to factor in intent, then it becomes ignored. For example, the "intent" for selling ad space on the pirate bay is to help pay for the internet connections and the hosting and power and stuff like that. The judge in the case ignored the intent and claimed they were a commercially driven activity.

It is becoming increasingly clear that law is falling away from even the appearance of being impartial and ruling by

The law is always falling away. it is a side effect of being 10-20 years behind the times. But like gravity it is also staying with us slowly.

An accountant should be able to quickly determine if the pirate bay is telling the truth. it won't take much unless the TPB leaders have done some clever book keeping to hide money. If they are doing the later then they should pay up. If however if the majority of their revenue is going to servers, and bandwidth then they are telling the truth that they really a

An accountant should be able to quickly determine if the pirate bay is telling the truth. it won't take much unless the TPB leaders have done some clever book keeping to hide money. If they are doing the later then they should pay up. If however if the majority of their revenue is going to servers, and bandwidth then they are telling the truth that they really aren't in it for the money.

Beging profitable isn't really required to be commercial. If they are selling ad space, they are doing business regardless of where the money is going.

If I were to look up houses to rob on google - shouldn't google be liable for facilitating the services for me to do so?How about publishers of city plans?Local government for labeling streets and houses making it easier for me to rob a particular house?

Besides... You can't really prove intent. That is why there are no pre-crime units and that is why there are repeated offenders.

There's a delicate art to creating analogies. Identifying situations with similarities is the easy part. The real trick is identifying two situations without differences relevant to the situation. It's those differences that sink analogies.

For example, there is a difference between The Pirate Bay and Google, namely intent (as the OP and others have correctly identified). Intent makes all the difference when it comes to courts, and people in general. That means that analogies between TPB and Google will be r

and how justice is under the paid service of the corporations, not to mention legislators, and the charade of a fair and free society is being maintained despite corporations and wealthy do not have any problems ignoring and bypassing laws through the power of money if they feel the need. and all is rationalized behind a twisted interpretation of 'freedom' coupled with capitalism.

no. im not socialist. but im this close to being one from what i saw in the recent years.

..both TPB and Google will eventually be able to rely on the same protection as ISPs. They are neutral carriers of information and therefore should, in law, be held harmless.
The Pirate Bays difficulties are that publically they try to deliberately convey an air of behaving unlawfully and dangerously to attract attention. I think the Swedish court bit on this too much, rather than the actual evidence and law.
From what I can tell, the legal abilities of the primary Swedish courts don't appear to be too good; previous judgements against Pirate Bay have routinely been overturned on appeal, and I suspect this one will be no different.

The difference between them and an ISP though, at least in the case of The Pirate Bay, is that they don't carry any information that's copyright, only information -about- material that's potentially copyright. How many blocks of what size are available, what the hashes are for those blocks, etc.

Hey, I have an idea. I create a web site that is a service for the RIAA, MPAA and so on. It indexes all torrents from all trackers, so they can track the uploaders down. It is free for personal use ("everybody can track down those...uhum...greedy bastards...uhum..."), but will cost large sums for commercial use (eg **AAs). And I will call it btjunkie.org [btjunkie.org]. Two things that appeal to the **AA, because it reminds them of their biggest other activity.

I think this is what safe harbour is for. All the copyright holder has to do (and they do) is send Google a takedown notice and they'll generally comply. Try sending a takedown notice (or even a friendly request) to TPB and see what happens. [thepiratebay.org]

They are neutral carriers of information and therefore should, in law, be held harmless.

You could say that about anything! Try starting a library of child pornography and see if the justice system thinks you are a neutral carrier of information...

There are huge differences between the Google and TPB, and it's unbelievable how people keep spouting "They are essentially the same" when the only similarity is they both store information about other information! People who think what kind of information it is (info on web pages vs torrents to pirated software etc), how it's gathered (spider vs up

Actually, the law in some countries already distinguishes between providing access to information other people publish and publishing it yourself. Using German law as an example because that's where I am reasonably sure of the details:

-If you are directly responsible for illegal material being on the internet (as in uploading the stuff to a service like Rapidshare and making it publicly accessible), you can be sued and prosecuted. No doubt about it. But as I understand it, the Pirate Bay does not fall in t

The verdict explicitly addresses this point and states that due to TPB running the tracker and thus being intimately involved in the sharing of copyrighted material any comparison with Google is false. They were not convicted because TPB is hosting a bunch of torrent files, they were convicted because they were running a tracker.

Accually the verdict talks loosely about the tracker and more about how the torrent-files are the "tool" of the criminal in this case and since the torrent-files are saved on the harddrives of TPB (as compared to just temporarly going through, like in the router and proxy case) they are not granted immunity according to directive 2000/31/EG. The tracker is harder to categorize since it does not save any files, it just routes client connections pretty much.

Also, even though the torrent files are illegal, TPB could have avoided liability by removing them on request.

They could also have avoided liability by not admitting to piracy being their business idea. Hosting infringing content is OK. Not removing infringing content is OK, as long as you can claim to not be purposefully aiding the infringement. For example, by contacting the uploader and then going back to the complainer saying "look guys, you say this is your stuff, but the uploader, Sv

TPB refused to remove the files and stated that their goal was piracy.

AFAIK if TPB could even possibly be considered a common carrier then its legally irresponsible to remove a file, they would lose any chance they had of being considered a "common carrier" and might become liable for all content that has and will passes through them.

Common carriers are protected under paragraphs 16 and 17. Para 16 states that if you are just transferring the information, you're not liable, as long as you don't initiate or alter the information. (There's more but that's the gist of it.) That's the "common carrier" paragraph.

Para 17 says that if you just facilitate a transmission without altering the data, you're not liable. Specifically, your copies of the information must be deleted as soon as the transmission ends, and you may not store it in a perm

The verdict explicitly addresses this point and states that due to TPB running the tracker and thus being intimately involved in the sharing of copyrighted material any comparison with Google is false. They were not convicted because TPB is hosting a bunch of torrent files, they were convicted because they were running a tracker.

Moreover, while TPB site itself contains the Torrent files, Google only has links to such files.

And again, the "colour" of the bits is what matters, as already said before TPB site itself was not the issue in the trial, it was that the guys conspired to help people commit copyright infringement.

What TPB did and Google does not, is format the search results in a way that makes it easy to get exactly what you want. If you use the well known filetype:torrent on Google to search something all you get is the standard high page rank hits first. This with no peer or seed numbers, comments or screen captures,so it is a crap shoot as to actually getting a good file. I guess they will hide behind the term vague search results, or, 'we only provide the links and nothing more'. Now if the comments and seed info were decentralized... well that would be...

What TPB did and Google does not, is format the search results in a way that makes it easy to get exactly what you want.

Wait, so you're saying that the difference between Google and TPB is that TPB is better? So the only thing keeping Google from being guilty is relative incompetence at providing results? What if their searches improve to provide better results and information about those results?

Like what if they allowed you to sort results on torrents by how many seeders there were? That would be a legitimate search option for legitimate torrent use. Would that make Google guilty of the same things as TPB?

the fight with 'mighty google' and the justice dept is one I'd PAY to get at ticket to.

wait - what am I saying - I'll just wait for the replay on the torrents.

but I do want to see the 2 behemoths battle it out. anything that takes google down a notch (in humility) would actually be a good thing. I worry a lot about GOOG being the new evil empire (seriously).

Have they even read the verdict? The reason pirate bay was demed illegal was not because pirated content could be found, rather because almost ALL (well above 90%) was illegal, and the court found that the service was created IN ORDER TO distibute such content.

The similarity with google is about as close as an alligator and a lightbulb.

Since the staff at piratebay have been pretty outspoken about what they do, going as far as to say that yes we have mostly pirated material here, but it is legal in sweeden s

Good idea! Let's give the media industry authority to have anything stricken from search engines with a mere accusation. They'll never abuse that power. The whole burden of proof thing is overrated anyway. (NOT!)

As the article already mentions, the case against TPB is very much a moral victory for the MAFIAA. They need to show you can't "get away" with it.If Google wants to "co-operate" and avoid this kind of shitstorm, they'd enter into agreements with content owners where they'd agree on what kind of limitations is acceptable, in exchange for giving them a break and not pressuring governments to act.

The bad thing would be that this is all settled privately, and not checked by some kind of "rule of law". You might

1. TPB exists primarily to facilitate copyright violation. Google is a common carrier.

That you think TPB exists primarily to facilitate copyright violation is your interpretation of what TPB exists for. If TPB facilitates copyright violation, it is due to the actions of its users, just as Google's data caching is due to the actions of its search routines.

Alright, so Google has a lot less links to controversial content than TPB. Let me then ask you, would TPB be exonerated if they started linking to non-copyrighted content, and if so, how many such links would it need to have in order to atta

I'm all for supporting TPB, but I wonder if the Google defence is what lost them the case (as well as a corrupt judge).

Google does not host torrent files, without torrent files you don't have access to the content - sure you can use Google to search for torrents, but the results will be off-site (probably thepiratebay.org!) not hosted on google.com itself.

Google does not run trackers. If TPB's torrents were all DHT-only, then they might have an argument.

When an unfair judgement happens in a court of law, there are essentially 3 ways to defeat it:1) Appeal ( which I am sure is going to happen)2) Act to unseat the judges or other entities who pass the unfair judgement. This may be happening already as the Pirate Party in Sweden gains members and a voice3) Mass acts of public dissent. If a large number of websites post just one "infringing" link on their pages, then the law becomes moot, as the enforcement would have to target all those who "infringed".It boi

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

"Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."

" One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."

Why is almost everyone saying that Google and PirateBay are doing the same thing? Is this some kind of mass delusion? Self deception? Or have we all learned disingenuous lawyers' tactics from crappy TV dramas? It was always a lame justification, a poor diversionary defensive posture, and never had any chance of being taken seriously outside of the lowest common denominator world of duh intarweb.